Westford petitioners put future of local school on agenda

Feb. 22, 2014

Westford Elementary School students head home on Monday. / GLENN RUSSELL/FREE PRESS

Written by

Free Press Staff Writer

Education financing discussion

The debate over the future of Westford’s school has prompted the community to hold a meeting with several local state senators where residents can discuss their concerns with property taxes. The meeting will be held from 6:30-8:30 p.m. Thursday, at the Westford school. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Tim Ashe, D/P-Chittenden, will be among those attending. Ashe said he would talk about factors that are going in to the increase in property taxes around the state. Two cents on the property tax rate will go to replacing $20 million in one-time money that the state used to fill the Education Fund last year. Ashe said his committee is looking at ways to help schools save money, including purchasing consortiums that have allowed some schools to save 40 percent on their supplies. He said that while some people blame rising costs on teachers, he is finding the real increase is in the number of para-professionals that schools employ. Typically, they are not those connected with special education, he said.

Westford school meeting

The Westford school meeting will be held at 7 p.m., March 3 at the Westford school, where residents will debate and vote on the non-binding advisory question regarding the school’s future. Westford residents will vote on the school budget and capital improvement plan and elect two members of the School Board by Australian ballot voting from 7 a.m.-7 p.m. at the school.

Westford by the numbers

LOCATION: On the northeastern edge of Chittenden County. POPULATION: 1,611 in 2010. MEDIAN HOUSEHOLD INCOME: $80,000 MEDIAN HOUSE VALUE: $267,500 NUMBER OF STUDENTS: 179 in grades pre-K through 8 at Westford Elementary. In 2004, the school had 256 students. In 2024 it is projected to have 166. HIGH SCHOOL: The town has no high school, opting instead to pay tuition for students in grades 9-12 to attend other public or non-religious private schools. Next year’s budget projects 69 students will go to Essex High School, 18 to Mount Mansfield Union, 16 to BFA Fairfax, one to Champlain Valley Union and none to private schools. BUDGET INFORMATION: Next year’s proposed budget, which goes before the voters by Australian ballot March 4, is $5,153,985, a 2.29 percent increase. Property taxes would go up 10.7 percent. TEST SCORES: Westford Elementary performs generally above average on standardized tests. In grades 3-8 reading last fall, the school had 78 percent proficient or better compared to 70 percent statewide. In math for grades 3-8, 69 percent were proficient or better compared to 62 percent statewide. The results were weaker in science, where scores for fourth grade showed 38 percent proficient or better compared to 48 percent statewide. TEACHER SALARIES: Westford teacher salaries are at or below the average for Chittenden County. Beginning teachers start at $41,077 this year, according to the Vermont NEA teachers union. The lowest starting salaries are in Winooski at $37,000 and the highest in Essex Junction at $43,000. Teachers with a master’s degree and 10 years of experience make $58,193 in Westford, the lowest for that level in the county, with the highest in South Burlington at $66,786. Teachers with 30 years or more in Westford make $77,020 compared to a low of $74,320 in Winooski and a high of $86,821 in South Burlington.

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WESTFORD — Kristen Elliott walked hand in hand with daughter Evie as she picked her up after school the other day. This is Evie’s first year at the school, but both kindergartner and mom are “very happy” with the Westford Elementary School, Elliott said.

The teachers are welcoming and responsive. Evie gets the help she needs. Elliott said she is sorry to hear talk in town about the possibility of closing Westford Elementary and turning it into an independent school.

“I would be afraid we’d lose some of those things,” she said.

Joe Franz, who used to serve on the Westford School Board and had five now-grown children go through the school, considers the idea of replacing the public school with an independent one at least worth exploring. He is among the 100 Westford residents who signed a petition that puts the future of the community’s 179-student grades pre-K-8 school on the agenda at town meeting March 3.

“I think my main motivation was our tax bill went up 10 percent last year and is going up 10 percent this year,” Franz said. “We’re ending up having to pay more money for less. It’s just not a sustainable thing.”

The idea of turning a public school independent is modeled on North Bennington, which made the change last year, with residents arguing that they were losing control over their public school and could regain control by going independent. Giving up a public school run by an elected board in favor of a private entity so unnerves some state officials they’ve called for banning the change.

The petition in Westford has ignited a lively and sometimes bitter debate on the community website Front Porch Forum. Residents have unleashed their ire on the teachers union and on the state’s education funding system. Others have jumped to the defense of the school, launching a Facebook page to rally support for keeping a public school that several parents said is the reason they moved to Westford.

While the petition brings this debate to a head in Westford, the issues driving it are unfolding around Vermont. Voters find themselves faced with rising property taxes amid declining enrollments and a sense that voters have little say in both how much their schools cost and what the schools teach.

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Like elsewhere, Westford’s proposed school budget is up a relatively small amount of 2.29 percent (less than the state average of about 3 percent). Over the last five years, the school budget has declined by .14 percent. Property taxes have not followed suit, though, and are slated to rise nearly 11 percent this year, a conundrum driven by both local and statewide factors.

The increase in Westford was driven in part by declining enrollment and a state funding formula bases taxes on per-pupil spending, declining property values, a loss of federal money and the fact that 2 cents on the property tax rate statewide next year will go to replace $20 million used last year to fill the Education Fund.

“This is not a Westford-only issue,” said Mark Drapa, chairman of the Westford School Board. “This is a pickle.”

One of the other towns with a similar scenario: North Bennington. The proposed new budget there is up just .28 percent, but taxes are due to rise an average of 8 percent in this first year after the community closed the public school and started paying tuition to send children to an independent school operated in the same building.

From petition to non-binding vote

There is a difference between the move toward an independent school in North Bennington and what’s happening in Westford. In North Bennington, the school board and school officials supported the change. In Westford, the petition arrived on the school board’s doorstep unbidden and unplanned-for.

“We did not know we would be receiving it,” Drapa said. But, he said, “We welcome input from our townspeople.”

As head of the school board, Drapa said he’s remaining objective on the issue, but he noted that the proposal leaves many questions unanswered. “I’m very hopeful that people will become as educated on the topic as they need to make a decision.”

The petition, as submitted, asked voters to close the school at the end of this school year and tuition students out to other schools while repairs are made to the building and it can be reopened as an independent school that would accept publicly tuitioned students.

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Because of legal issues, the wording Westford voters will see when the issue comes up on the floor at the March 3 town meeting will be different from the wording of the petition. The school board consulted with attorneys and learned that while a school board can close a school, voters don’t have that legal authority, and the board lacks the authority to open an independent school, Drapa said.

“We need to be very cautious because we’re obligated to follow education law,” Drapa said.

So the item residents will vote on from the floor at the meeting is a non-binding advisory measure that will ask:

“Shall the Westford Elementary School be closed at the end of the 2013-2014 school year and shall the voters authorize the Board of School Directors to provide for the education of the School District’s Pre K-8 pupils by paying tuition in accordance with state law.”

Some who signed the petition are unhappy that the wording includes nothing about looking into making the school independent, but the idea will surely surface during the debate that night.

Westford resident Sue Conklin, who circulated the petition, declined to discuss it for this article other than to say, “I am only one of the petitioners, and everyone signing and in the community has a unique perspective on what needs to change. This is a laymen’s article that was never legal and was presented in an attempt to promote change.”

Her reticence reflects how touchy the subject of the school’s future is. Longtime Westford School Board member Martha Heath, who is a state legislator and chairwoman of the House Appropriations Committee, also declined to comment, deferring to Drapa. School Principal Marcie Lewis declined to weigh in, saying she’s focused on the students.

Conklin has taken heat for the wording of the petition on Westford’s online Front Porch Forum. In response, on the forum, she wrote, “The spirit and intent of the petition is NOT about closing a school.

“It is about using a unique VT (not NY or NJ) method, creating an independent school, to give a community the ability to create a sustainable path for our school. Volunteer action is required, not top down decisions from people in positions of power, or elected officials in Montpelier. No one signing the petition or the many others that support it want to close the school.”

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Conklin also posted links to videos of interviews she taped in recent weeks with headmasters of the Winhall and North Bennington schools, the only two cases in Vermont where a community took a public school and made it into an independent one.

Sheila Franz and her husband, Joe, both signed the petition. She is more strongly in favor of looking into privatizing the school than he is, but they agree something has to be done about rising property taxes.

“I said anything to shake up the school budget,” said Joe Franz. He said he is urging fellow residents to vote against the budget to send a message to local and state officials that the current system isn’t working.

Sheila Franz said she sees going independent as a way to free the school from costly constraints, including teacher union contracts and curriculum mandates in which the town has little or no say.

“Independent schools just have a lot more flexibility,” she said. “If they’re not perfect you can tuition elsewhere.”

Heather Armata, whose three children attend Westford Elementary, said the petition to close the public school and reopen an independent school “was pretty shocking to many people.”

She started a Facebook page to encourage people who support keeping the school public to attend the March 3 meeting. The item will not be on the paper ballot that residents vote on Tuesday at the polls. Only those who attend the Monday night meeting can vote on the issue of the school’s future.

Armata said she and her husband moved to Westford almost 12 years ago in part because of the school. She said she regularly talks to her children’s teachers, volunteers at the school and finds the school staff responsive. “The sense of community is so great,” she said.

Armata, who works as a real estate agent, said she also worries about property taxes but in the business of selling houses, she sees that property taxes are an issue in every town. “That’s a state issue. We can’t control that. I think our school board did a great job in keeping that in check,” she said.

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John Eckerson, a Westford resident who is a retired Milton teacher, said he also understands the frustration over taxes. “I really get it. I understand why people are feeling pinched because I am, too,” he said, but he considers taking a public school and making it private “irresponsible.”

If the idea is that the community can save money on teacher salaries by going independent, he questions, “Do you really want to hire somebody at $20,000 and see how that works? Who are you actually going to have teaching?”

Alex Weinhagen, a Westford Selectboard member, said he’s wary of making the public school independent. “I have not been convinced that it’s really going to address the issues people are most concerned about,” he said. “I think it’s a very vocal minority who would like that option explored.”

Weinhagen said he plans to make a motion at the meeting to reword the article and vote on whether to convene a study committee to report back at the 2015 town meeting on the idea of making an independent community school replacing the public school.

“I think this would allow us to talk about and vote on the issue more positively, and without the fear that an affirmative vote might actually give the School Board the idea that school closure is a desired outcome,” Weinhagen told fellow residents on Front Porch Forum.

It took North Bennington several years to work toward its decision last year to close its public school and open a new independent school this school year in the same building with the same principal and the town paying tuition. The process involved earning accreditation for the new school, something made easier by the fact the school board and principal were willing participants.

Residents there said they were worried they would be forced to consolidate with a bigger Bennington district and would lose control over their community school. After nearly six months, they are happy with the move, said Bruce Lierman, a member of the North Bennington Prudential Committee, the public board that now pays tuition to send children to the privately operated school.

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He said he believes residents have more control over the school now than they had when it was public, and that the independent school has been more cost-conscious. “Our budget would have been significantly higher if we had been operating a public school,” he said.

The change to an independent school was not without its costs, however. The district is dipping into its surplus money in part because it had to pay tuition for five more students than expected who are attending other private schools. Once the town closed the public school, those who had already been attending non-religious private schools were eligible for publicly funded tuition.

Ray Mullineaux, chairman of the North Bennington Prudential Committee, was quizzed about his community’s experience by the Senate Education Committee recently. He said the district saved money on special education costs by going independent. The new Village School offers special education to all the categories of students who received the services in the public school, but he said the school reduced special ed staff by two position by making better use of one position.

Access to special education is one of the biggest concerns of those who oppose public schools going independent. Mullineaux said the change didn’t affect any student’s access to special education, but the new independent school is accredited for only three of 12 special education categories, raising worries among some that future students could be denied service.

Last week, members of the state Board of Education voted unanimously to urge the legislature to bar Vermont public schools from closing for the purpose of becoming independent.

“The reason is democracy,” board member William Mathis told the House and Senate Education committees at a Statehouse meeting.

Both legislative committees are considering either halting the practice or putting restrictions on it to ensure that the same services are offered by a private school using accepting tuition money.

In one of his last actions before leaving office last month as education secretary, Armando Vilaseca penned a report recommending the state forbid communities from turning a public school into a private one. Vilaseca wrote the report in response to North Bennington’s move. He also happens to be a Westford resident and former Westford school principal.

As he did with North Bennington, Vilaseca argues that by going independent, Westford would be giving up its democratic say in how the school is run. “I think it would also cost us more money,” he said.

When he was principal in Westford, Vilaseca said, parents sometimes asked if they could send their kids to other schools that were geographically closer to home — in Essex, Underhill and Jericho. That option was unavailable as long as Westford had its own school. If the town closes its school, he said, parents might choose those schools, decreasing enrollment to any new independent school.